As zentara mentions below, you have to base64 encode the image first. Here is a snippet from Matering Perl/Tk which shows one was to do it:

sub encode_photo_data {
    
    my($file) = @_;

    use MIME::Base64;
    my ($bin, $data, $stat);

    open PHOTO, $file or die "Cannot open $file: $!";
    while ( $stat = sysread PHOTO, $bin, 57 * 17 ) {
        $data .= encode_base64($bin);
    }
    close PHOTO or die $!;
    die "sysread error: $!" unless defined $stat;

    $data;

} # end encode_photo_data
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Regards, mawe

Hi mawe,

OK - so I tried this:

use Tk;
my $top = new MainWindow;
my $pic = $top->Photo(-file=>encode_photo_data("up.bmp"));
$top->Button(-image=>$pic)->pack();
MainLoop();

sub encode_photo_data {
my($file) = @_;
use MIME::Base64;
my ($bin, $data, $stat);
open PHOTO, $file or die "Cannot open $file: $!";
while ( $stat = sysread PHOTO, $bin, 57 * 17 ) {
$data .= encode_base64($bin);
}
close PHOTO or die $!;
die "sysread error: $!" unless defined $stat;
$data;
} # end encode_photo_data

now it returns 'Cannot open + a lot of binary data...?

What am I doing wrong?

I receive the message:
Cannot open '

***lots of binary data***

' in mode 'r' at ../Image.pm line 21